---
title: "What RevOps Should Look Like at Every Stage"
episode: 115
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Hassan Irshad"
guest_title: "Head of Revenue Operations"
date_published: 2026-09-10
date_modified: 2026-09-14
duration: 01:10:23
word_count: 10882
topics: ["revenue-operations", "sales-compensation", "consumption-revenue", "ai-in-gtm", "forecasting"]
canonical_url: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/hassan-irshad-unify-revops-every-stage/
source: "LeanScale Knowledge Hub — https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# What RevOps Should Look Like at Every Stage — Full Transcript

> Episode 115 of The LeanScale Podcast, with Hassan Irshad.
> Published September 10, 2026 · 01:10:23 · 10882 words.
> Machine-transcribed and **not diarized** — speaker attribution is inferred, so verify
> attribution against the audio before quoting a specific person.
> Structured breakdown: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/hassan-irshad-unify-revops-every-stage/

## 00:00 — Cold open + intro

**[0:00]** My guest today has spent nearly a decade in RevOps, which, as he'll tell you, is about as long as anyone can honestly claim.

**[0:07]** Because that's roughly when the function was born.

**[0:10]** Cassandra is the head of RevOps at Unify, one of the AI-native GTM companies backed by OpenAI and Battery Ventures.

**[0:18]** That is actually deploying agents across the entire revenue cycle, rather than just talking about it.

**[0:25]** If you have RevOps that just agrees with everything a CRO says and executes, you are a ticketing center.

**[0:33]** What is the confidence it's making? Right? The confidence it makes is like you just give that bad information with a lot more confidence and faster.

**[0:42]** Do you think AI is making RevOps irrelevant or more important than ever?

**[0:49]** That is a good question. I truly believe it has made RevOps a lot more relevant.

**[0:58]** There's no better time to build. There's no better time to deploy these kind of things.

**[1:05]** If you're not leading the AI charge in your company, then you're doing something completely wrong.

**[1:12]** And like we were talking about, there's no better time to be in RevOps than right now with everything that's happening in AI.

## 01:33 — Building the car while it's already going 100 miles an hour

**[1:33]** Kazan, you described building RevOps inside a hypergrowth company as building a car while it's already going 100 miles an hour.

**[1:42]** Take me through the moment the metaphor actually comes from, and what did that actually look like on the ground?

**[1:48]** Yeah, absolutely. So interestingly, the metaphor actually comes from a lot of pain. Having been in the space for 10 years in hypergrowth startups as well as bigger organizations,

**[2:03]** I've realized that a lot of times, and I interestingly say this as internally as like, this is one of the hardest jobs at a startup to do RevOps at an early stage hypergrowth company.

**[2:15]** Reason being, you are building as your foundations are shifting. And that's where you're actually building a car as it's going super fast, is maybe you launched a process.

**[2:30]** And I've learned it again from being an analyst, working my way towards a manager and head of RevOps, and building a lot of stuff.

**[2:38]** And anyone who was working in a hypergrowth company can relate. You might end up launching a process, launching a new tool.

**[2:48]** Three months later, the landscape has shifted, the market has shifted, the business decision making has shifted.

**[2:55]** Maybe the personnel who made the decision is also not there, because that's also another consideration within hypergrowth companies.

**[3:02]** People come, people go. Now you have to adapt to that. So while you're building, a bunch of things are changing, and new challenges are throwing your way.

**[3:14]** In a larger organization, having worked at much more stable ground for you to actually deploy something, test something.

**[3:21]** Here's the next day, whatever your launch needs to be changed overnight. And now you have to do it. So again, it is, in my opinion, one of the hardest jobs to do.

**[3:32]** But also, it's rewarding. It is a lot of fun to do that.

**[3:37]** Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I ran RevOps for three companies before building the company that runs RevOps for dozens of companies now.

**[3:45]** So I know it's very challenging, and it's also challenging even when you have a team behind you.

**[3:51]** But I'd love to know, what were one of the biggest shifts that really kind of shook the foundation that you had to keep up with?

**[4:02]** Yeah, so interestingly, RevOps, like at an early stage, like talking about like the stage cycle, at an early stage, you're setting a lot of the foundations in place.

**[4:13]** So let's say the team never ran a sales process with sales stages. You're enabling, you're creating, you're setting a process for new sales stages.

**[4:25]** And you are working and partnering with the VP of Sales or a sales leader that actually knows what they're doing for that time period.

**[4:34]** Four months later, you have a totally new VP of Sales.

**[4:38]** They completely want different stages or different like architecture of it.

**[4:44]** And now whatever you have built is actually needs to be moved.

## 04:49 — The small boat vs. the cruise ship

**[4:49]** So another example I give here is like, when you're in a smaller company, think of a smaller boat, much easier to steer versus a gigantic cruise.

**[5:02]** Right. That takes days or hours to just like maneuver to a totally opposite direction and just go into that direction.

**[5:12]** Right. So now for an early growth company for RevOps, I think the RevOps needs to be nimble and flexible enough, like be malleable enough to steer, to steer fast.

**[5:26]** And that's where I've had like VP of Sales that have used Medic.

**[5:32]** All of a sudden I got a VP of Sales that wants to instill and I truly believe in Spiced.

**[5:37]** Okay. Now, even though those methodologies do overlap a fair bit, you do have to enable a different structure in place.

**[5:46]** And sometimes in a fast growth company, it's overnight.

**[5:50]** It's like okay, the time is of the essence because while you're internally building stuff out, the company externally is battling existence as an early growth company, finding product market fit.

**[6:03]** So those decisions I think are very crucial at an early stage.

**[6:08]** And sometimes it's a fun battle. You tell people this cannot be done overnight.

**[6:12]** So it's like you find a middle ground, but you should be early stage company. RevOps just needs to be flexible enough to maneuver fast and still able to move forward.

## 06:26 — Why every new VP of Sales rewrites the sales stages

**[6:26]** I'd like to go back to the stage changing.

**[6:30]** Yeah.

**[6:31]** Why does every CRO or VP of Sales when they come into a company feel like they need to change the stages of sales?

**[6:39]** What is happening there? Because I know I've seen the same thing that you just described.

**[6:44]** Why do you think they come in and start with that?

**[6:47]** So my read working with like dozens of VP of Sales and CROs in those like that kind of like mentality of like coming in and part of it is like, of course, you do want to bring some change.

**[7:00]** You want to have like you're probably brought in for a purpose to steer people towards like a certain direction. Now imagine like, and this happens.

**[7:09]** Another area we should touch on is like their sales folks or sales leaders that'd be like, I know this tech stack and this is what I use and my sellers use this tech stack.

**[7:20]** I want to move everybody off that and go into this tech stack direction.

**[7:24]** Now, a lot of the other premises, their experiences, the premise is like they have seen like they've implemented that their previous company, Medic, and had worked.

**[7:35]** And a lot of like CROs and VP of Sales are making that mistake that I've seen internally happen a lot of times.

**[7:43]** It's just slapping that playbook that they have read.

**[7:47]** Right.

**[7:48]** And just like say like, okay, this is what I know.

**[7:51]** So this is what I'm going to do.

**[7:53]** And a lot of times I've partnered and battled.

**[7:57]** And it's a fun balance between that is like, yes, RevOps is in a great position to actually tell you that this doesn't work for our business for XYZ reasons, even though it may have worked at a previous organization.

**[8:12]** So I think it's a lot of predefined ideas that people come in and join with.

**[8:18]** Every time I've gone in into an organization, I've usually come with like an open mind to see I know, I don't want to rip everything apart.

**[8:27]** What works, what works.

**[8:28]** Don't reinvent the wheel.

**[8:30]** Like if it's already there and it works, you can find a better version.

**[8:33]** You can hone it.

**[8:34]** Like you can get a lot better rather than just ripping it apart.

**[8:38]** But I think it's less ingrained in CROs and sales because they have run an organization that has produced like dollar results with this.

**[8:47]** RevOps is very internal powering it.

**[8:50]** So RevOps knows the infrastructure works or not or how difficult it is to just like change everything overnight and what it impacts.

**[8:57]** Like it's not only just like change the sales stages.

**[9:00]** Like it's also are the stages aligned with how you actually sell or is it just somebody read a playbook and truly believe in it and has used this in the past three companies.

**[9:12]** So they think it will work.

**[9:15]** So that's definitely my theory.

**[9:17]** No, it makes a ton of sense and it's something I see all the time.

**[9:20]** I know other heads of RevOps we've had on the podcast share that as well.

**[9:24]** And I think it's tough to balance how far you lean into strategy versus execution.

## 09:32 — "If RevOps just executes, you're a ticketing center"

**[9:32]** Do you think it's your role to push back on the CRO?

**[9:37]** Absolutely.

**[9:38]** I think 100 percent. I think if you have RevOps that just agrees with everything a CRO says and executes you are you are a ticketing center.

**[9:52]** You are not strategic.

**[9:53]** Like the whole point of having RevOps by your side leading the world class kind of like you know strategies is pushing back where it doesn't make sense.

**[10:04]** And I've had amazing partners like that.

**[10:06]** I have pushed back to CROs.

**[10:08]** I've pushed back to CEOs like where it doesn't make sense.

**[10:12]** That's why you sit in a strategic position until then like this is a bad decision for XYZ reasons.

**[10:18]** Again, it doesn't have to be like we're not going to do it.

**[10:22]** Right.

**[10:23]** When you go up the chain it has to be strategic enough to say here's XYZ reasons why we shouldn't do it.

**[10:30]** Here's option A, option B, option C that you can do it with this foreseeable result.

**[10:36]** So you give them an option to pick that there is an alternative.

**[10:40]** You can still get to their goals.

**[10:42]** Just the direction that you're picking needs to be strategic.

**[10:46]** And again, whenever I go into the organizations I've done this so many times and I've seen it fail.

**[10:54]** I have failed over time.

**[10:58]** So I've kind of learned how to get to that level of like execution and then be able to be the champion within to say like hey, let's take a beat here.

**[11:10]** Let's discuss why we're doing this rather than like again going back to like I always ask the question of why before a CRO pushes that like hey, we need to do this.

**[11:24]** What's one of the biggest decisions you have walked a CRO off a cliff from making that you know would have been a disaster operationally if we actually follow through?

**[11:38]** It's an example of the biggest one that you've protected the company from.

**[11:43]** I would say that the biggest changes usually come within how compensation structures change because that changes internally the whole conversation and how it aligns incentives for a team.

**[11:58]** I've had instances where we battled on like hey, this is how I want compensation to move and this is how we want A's to get paid and let's say postal to not get paid because postal is a function.

**[12:13]** Sometimes people believe that it's not like revenue producing in that manner and they're like okay, well they're maintaining so it shouldn't be there.

## 12:23 — The comp model for a company with no contracts

**[12:23]** Interestingly, we had a very interesting composition model at Fundraise Up, which is now a series B startup and it's a revenue share model and we kind of had to do a lot of like battles to get there.

**[12:42]** It's like hey, there's a traditional model of like you have a rep, they have an OT, they have all of these like kickers and all of that stuff and then you have postal, postal usually aligns with.

**[12:55]** Either you have like NPS, you have retention, you have NRR, GRR, all of that stuff that is like a standard one.

**[13:04]** Fundraise Up sat in a very interesting position because they were a B2B company that didn't have contracts and they were just running off like consumption model and paying people off that.

**[13:16]** I think it's one of the hardest models to build compensation and territories around.

**[13:22]** I have racked my brain around that for a while. It's not only that, the composition, like how do you recognize revenue, how do you know who's an enterprise tier customer, like you can have a big company consuming way less in there and like just fly off the radar.

**[13:44]** It's like hey, they're consuming like just enough to be an SMB company and that is a signal that they are not using your product rather than like they are a smaller company.

**[13:57]** So it's very fascinating and one of the things like, so we had this out of Unify as well, like we have a PLG motion now and doing the exact same thing that like again, I've learned over time from Fundraise Up.

**[14:10]** But we had, going back to your question of like the pushing back, yeah, compensation plans on like hey, I truly believe that in that model, the post sale team, the solutions engineers, everybody needed to align with the same incentive of increasing revenue for the customer rather than like everybody has their own KPIs and metrics.

**[14:37]** We're like, we need an R star metric and R star metric is increasing revenue number and once that revenue number comes in, everybody has a percentage share of that and that started just like aligning everyone together and everybody had the same goal of a customer going in, maximizing revenue.

**[14:57]** Nobody was like, hey, my thing is, you know, X and your thing is Y, so you're, and this is where RevOps sits, I think in a golden position of bringing these departments together historically has lived in silos.

**[15:14]** I've joined organizations where they have not even met for weeks.

**[15:18]** So, it is wild. But yeah, I think those were I think the highest impacting conversations with the CROs and eventually we had made that agreement.

**[15:33]** And yeah, we crushed our numbers, like quarter on quarter raises USB, like everything went in the direction they wanted it to go and then that's how you kind of prove your point at the end of the day.

## 15:48 — How usage-based pricing breaks quotas, territories, and comp

**[15:48]** I have a couple questions on on this specifically.

**[15:51]** So many companies are moving to a usage based model. They may have had a platform or C based model before because of AI, the gross margin doesn't make sense to be able to do that anymore.

**[16:03]** So they have to peg certain things to usage.

**[16:06]** And I think that is the purest usage type of comp plan.

**[16:13]** I'm curious how the team reacted to maybe especially on the sales side, closing something without any usage.

**[16:22]** And sometimes it may take six months to a year for it to start actually realizing value.

**[16:28]** And then the other question I have is account switching.

**[16:33]** So if you have someone close an account, but maybe you have to move accounts into different names.

**[16:38]** Yeah. And then the last one. Sorry, this is a three part question. Yeah. Quota setting.

**[16:44]** How did you set quotas and then how are you able to measure performance early enough?

**[16:50]** Yeah. So I guess let's break it down.

**[16:56]** So yeah, to your point, a lot of them are moving into this usage based setting and the compensation models are actually not as hard as they like I've seen historically some crazy compensation models.

**[17:10]** The reps don't even know how they're getting paid. That's kind of a compensation model I've seen.

**[17:18]** Incentivizing the reps to say, hey, you are tagged with this customer for a certain period of time rather than like, hey, you throw them off the fence and here's a postal team that catches it and they're like, it's your problem now.

**[17:36]** It's a change and fascinatingly, I think this is happening. The role for that is slowly changing. People are becoming more full cycle.

**[17:48]** People are becoming like, hey, I manage the relationship from start to end.

**[17:52]** So I find yourself, for example, our compensation plan ran for a year.

**[17:56]** It was like, hey, a year worth of revenue. Each month the revenue is produced, you are taking a percentage.

**[18:06]** So your goal is each month you want to maximize the revenue of a customer and everybody's actually feeding off that and it's the company goal.

**[18:14]** So everyone's aligned. So post-sale, sales team, pre-sales, everyone's goal is to bring it in and maximize that revenue for that one year, take it down to a totally different position and you all read the benefit of that.

**[18:31]** And that could be the company might be doing well. Great. You got a great logo that is actually doing amazing.

**[18:37]** There's still, you still have to manage the relationship, right? To your other point of like moving accounts.

## 18:48 — Timestamping account moves so comp survives mid-month

**[18:48]** That's a, that's a Revolv's headache I've had like regardless of usage model.

**[18:54]** And I have like a couple of like hacks internally that I've used on like, how do you track these?

**[19:01]** At Fund Reserve, we had a craziest model that we had built is we had a custom object in Salesforce that would bring in a revenue timestamp of like each customer for each day.

**[19:15]** And then we kind of rolled it up to say like, because composition gets very tricky if mid-month someone's leaving and somebody else takes over an account right now.

**[19:27]** You're like, okay, well, what was your start date for this account?

**[19:31]** So what we do is like we timestamp everything, like when ownership changes, like the ownership has a very easy timestamp.

**[19:40]** I can see like, okay, what are the changes that were made, especially when I'm running a monthly calculations?

**[19:45]** Okay, who got what book? So there's a constant report of running like your active book.

**[19:51]** Then you have time stamping to know exactly what's happening in Salesforce. You can have history tracking on fields to know like exactly who's moving what.

**[19:59]** A lot of those are gated by Revolv's. So you're like, okay, if you want to move accounts, you can't just like claim an account has to go through a process.

**[20:07]** If you are going through a process, I am able to do XYZ operationally that you don't even see, right?

**[20:15]** You're like, okay, give this person 10 accounts, mid-month account moving.

**[20:23]** The reasons of like, what's the like, is this person actually going to reach out to the customer and actually have an intro?

**[20:30]** Or are we just like, does this person actually know that they're getting 10 new accounts?

**[20:34]** There's lots of questions that like I start asking the moment somebody gives me like, can you move 10 accounts to this person's name?

**[20:43]** And that allows me to just peel the onion to get to like, okay, what is the core problem we are trying to solve?

**[20:48]** And then I need to build a scalable system because this is going to happen the next month. It's going to happen again.

**[20:55]** Like people leave, people get fired, people get promoted to a new account territory.

**[21:02]** Things are going to happen.

**[21:04]** I am anticipating that when I'm designing the system. And this is where Revolv's can get a lot more strategic and developing, right?

**[21:10]** So if a research company, less things happen in terms of like strategy and more like, hey, just let's do it.

**[21:17]** Dispatch it and like get it done.

**[21:20]** When you're starting to mature into like USB-D, like that kind of range, that doesn't cut it.

**[21:27]** Like your team is big enough.

**[21:31]** You had three reps when we were doing this.

**[21:34]** Now we have like 15.

**[21:36]** It doesn't really work the same way.

**[21:39]** And that requires a little bit of intelligent foundation that things are running on.

**[21:44]** If you don't have it, imagine six months down the line, you are redesigning the entire system and nobody has time to re-architect that overnight again and deploy this.

**[21:57]** So it is fascinating how the market is moving towards more user space and new compositions and roles are changing.

**[22:06]** So we're going to see that more and more of like a full cycle a concept of like handing the relationship from start to end and they may even manage like renewals.

**[22:18]** It is interesting that the pricing and packaging starts to inform what the team in the field looks like.

**[22:25]** But I'm seeing a lot of companies transition and a lot of companies are struggling with that.

**[22:29]** So I think it's really helpful, everything you shared. And the last one, setting quotas.

**[22:37]** What's the mechanism? And maybe let's pick the hardest one, like a pure usage base play, like no committed revenue at all.

**[22:43]** You close deals and you wait to see what they use. How do you go about doing that? Or is the same process even relevant?

**[22:49]** No, that's a very interesting like area.

## 22:55 — Predicting ARR from 60 days of usage data

**[22:55]** We had to do a lot of trial and error here because to the point like how do you know how big a customer is until they start using your product and until you have enough data on that to say like I'm going to extrapolate.

**[23:12]** So what we did was was another because there was no playbook for this when we were building it.

**[23:19]** The usage base is much more common today. This is still I believe like what five years ago, six years ago, we didn't have that.

**[23:28]** It's just like hey, revenue is coming in and we're just like it's all usage base and people are doing it.

**[23:32]** We didn't even have a contract with them. So we don't know how much your error is. So we're just running off that.

**[23:39]** We built out a prediction algorithm that kind of took their usage patterns for about I believe 60 days.

**[23:54]** And we kept on running this from a historical because we still had customers and we still had usage data regardless of whether the model was different.

**[24:04]** We just ran the analysis on those and see like, OK, like what kind of pattern recognition can we can get.

**[24:13]** So Fundraze Up was an interesting market because it was nonprofits.

**[24:17]** It is with nonprofits gets slightly harder, but also somewhat predictable.

**[24:23]** If you're a Christian nonprofit, you usually get an uptick in December around Christmas time.

**[24:29]** Almost every single nonprofit gets an uptick right before end of the year because it's tax season.

**[24:35]** So everybody puts their receipts and stuff. You have a Muslim nonprofit.

**[24:40]** There's two spikes off like the holidays that are going to come in.

**[24:44]** So we started building an intelligent model that started looking at, OK, tomorrow, if I sign a Christian nonprofit, I know there's one spike coming in.

**[24:52]** The rest I can extrapolate for 60 days of data and saying I can aggregate and I can vary accurately.

**[24:58]** We went to actually 85 to 90 percent accuracy of an ARR after 60 days of time.

**[25:05]** So our initial comp plan was built on a lag because, again, you're tied for a year.

**[25:12]** So it doesn't really matter for the rep because they're going to get reaping the benefit for the entire year.

**[25:19]** We would like delay the first month payment and the second month payment.

**[25:22]** We kind of know the error. And oftentimes we are kind of like when we are already predicting it and sometimes like the nonprofit will give us their last year's donation data.

**[25:33]** So we fed that in. We exactly know kind of where they're going.

**[25:38]** We got to a point where we could just like pay everybody monthly.

**[25:41]** We didn't really actually have to delay any payments like this is the first pain of like building the architecture.

**[25:46]** And then we got about 85 to 90 percent of ARR accuracy. And the more data we get kept on getting after 60 days to 90 days to 120 days, the model kept on getting better.

**[25:57]** And again, I would say also that was that's not for everyone.

**[26:05]** It had a lot of complexity to build.

**[26:08]** But again, like finding solutions was the job for Ralph's run how you get people paid, how you line incentives and things were working.

**[26:16]** So kind of worked out. But I think there's a lot of like new composition models that are coming out and Coda setting kind of then eventually becomes a conversation on like, hey, what's your industry?

**[26:30]** You know, Coda, you still need to kind of like tied. It cannot be unattainable for a rep.

**[26:37]** The concepts of the foundations of Coda setting still apply. Right. It's like you want enough reps to hit Coda.

**[26:44]** You want like, you know, 10 to 20 percent of your reps to achieve overachieve your Coda.

**[26:50]** That just starts showing that it is attainable rather than it's like so.

## 26:54 — Top-down vs. bottoms-up quota setting

**[26:54]** But you can do bottoms up. And in every organization, there's a top stone. Right.

**[26:59]** So there's a VC target and people have to like then distribute the target.

**[27:06]** Ralph's job is like finding the answers here. Like how are you going to hit the target?

**[27:12]** How many people you actually need to deploy this Coda?

**[27:15]** It cannot be like now we have three people. So the entire whatever 20 million ARR is split by three people. That is not attainable.

**[27:24]** Yeah, it's like I use like both approaches to say this is your top stone.

**[27:29]** But if I ran bottoms up approach, you are not going to hit it because it's humanly impossible for three people to hit that.

**[27:35]** So, yeah, I think a lot of people struggle with that capacity planning.

**[27:39]** So, hey, do we have enough reps in the field? Do we have the right marketing channels that are producing enough?

**[27:44]** Are these marketing channels even elastic?

**[27:47]** Like, can I put a dollar in extra and get another dollar back or they're diminishing returns on some of these channels?

**[27:54]** And just making sure, hey, do we have enough coverage to even go hit this plane?

**[27:58]** I think a lot of people sign up for plans that are failed right out the gate because they didn't 100 percent.

**[28:05]** They designed badly and they're not redesigned periodically.

**[28:09]** That's the problem as well. Like the plans are sitting there for two years.

**[28:13]** OK, did anybody review those plans? This is how you sell it.

**[28:17]** You have to change the plans and deploy the plans again and make sure like the the whole goal is not to just get people paid,

**[28:26]** but to encourage people to hit the quota.

**[28:29]** Like you have to make a plan good enough that they feel motivated that they can maximize their earning.

**[28:37]** But in the same time, the company is actually like hitting their targets.

**[28:42]** But a lot of times that gets disconnected and might be for preconceived notion of how the CRO or VP of sales have run compensations in the past.

**[28:55]** This is where relatives can be an anchor and kind of just ground and say, like, hey, this needs to be strategic.

**[29:03]** And to the conversation on like early stage companies, you don't even have that.

**[29:10]** Like if you're putting one dollar in and what are you getting out?

**[29:13]** You just don't have that visibility. Right.

**[29:16]** So people are just like doing it for forecast.

**[29:19]** People are running on vibes.

**[29:21]** Somebody has a Google sheet that I've inherited that kind of like structure and built it out into a well oiled machine at the end,

**[29:31]** because that's the operational rigor that like robots needs to have an early stage and then start evolving and then eventually get to a point when it's like you're optimizing it.

## 29:44 — The RevOps unicorn problem

**[29:44]** I think something that's difficult for people not in rev ops to understand is how a dynamic and complex the function really is.

**[29:55]** And I think there's an assumption, especially at the early stage, it's like, oh, yeah, I need a rev ops person.

**[30:01]** I need the person who's technical and strategic and process oriented and can get in the field with my reps and hold themselves in the executive room and maybe write shotgun and a fund raise process.

**[30:12]** I think a lot of people are looking for unicorns and maybe there's a couple of them out there.

**[30:16]** But what what would your recommendation be?

**[30:21]** I don't know the fundraising thresholds aren't even the great greatest proxy, but let's just use them as an example.

**[30:27]** What does rev ops look like?

**[30:29]** It's series A, series B, series C and then beyond.

**[30:32]** And like what would your build order be of that function?

**[30:37]** Yeah, so I mean, that's that's a great question. And I do agree.

**[30:43]** It's harder to find good talent in rev ops and everyone's looking for a unicorn, especially at like series A stage.

**[30:50]** You're like, hey, you it's funny, I've seen like ads posted of someone's like, hey, 15 years of rev ops experience.

**[30:58]** Like rev ops wasn't a thing like 15 years ago.

**[31:04]** Ten years ago, Max. Yeah, so it's it's it's it's funny.

## 31:09 — Series A: hire the generalist, not the admin

**[31:09]** But I think what early stage companies should be looking for when hiring for rev ops is like, again,

**[31:19]** lots of times the CEOs are hiring.

**[31:22]** Maybe it's early stage enough that you don't have a CRO properly.

**[31:26]** You just have somebody running.

**[31:28]** And see your CEOs start doing like, you know, sales, eventually they take over and you have a VP of sales coming in that eventually becomes like at series B to C or D like CRO level of like leadership.

**[31:47]** But I would say at early stage, you are looking for more talent that is like more generalist.

**[31:53]** You don't need admins.

**[31:55]** You don't need somebody like, hey, I need someone who knows Salesforce admin like stuff like that's not what you're looking for.

**[32:03]** You're looking for a more well rounded individual, especially early stage who can come in and set some of the foundations because if you're not built out the foundations and a lot of times this happens.

**[32:15]** Like if you hire, let's say somebody who worked at an IPO company and put them into a early hyper growth stage startup, they will most definitely fail.

**[32:26]** I've seen people fail because maybe they've never had an exposure to rip everything that is in rev ops and rebuild it.

**[32:37]** It's dynamic, it's a wildly dispersed function.

**[32:45]** Like it has so many things you can add into it and it changes business by business, right?

**[32:51]** To your point, in some cases you are going into the field and helping reps.

**[32:54]** Like in some cases, I've seen rev ops even leading a BDR team.

**[32:57]** Like, so there's so many variations of it, but what you're looking for an early stage that you want somebody to come in, build foundations for you, but build it in a system that is not rigid.

**[33:11]** Like if you're building rigid foundations immediately to the point of like the analogy of like 100 miles an hour car that is running, you should be able to be flexible again to steer the boat

**[33:26]** and steer it fast because time is of the essence of early stage companies.

**[33:32]** For me, for example, like if I have not done this so many times, it's a daunting thing to do.

**[33:40]** Just jump in and just start like building and seeing like, okay, well, overnight now we need 15 other things.

**[33:46]** My calendar has always looked way more horrible than I was working in a bigger company.

**[33:51]** So everybody wants things, everybody wants things now.

**[33:56]** Otherwise, the job is not going to happen.

**[33:58]** The company is going to go to town.

**[34:00]** One big deal, you're like, okay, well, I've worked overnight to just make sure like that deal is going smoothly and we close in the morning.

**[34:09]** So stakes are very different.

**[34:13]** Then you go to a higher, so higher generalist, hire somebody who's done this before.

## 34:21 — Twenty Salesforce admins and the case for structured chaos

**[34:21]** Every time I've inherited a system, there's like 20 people who hold Salesforce admin.

**[34:26]** And that's the entire company that has Salesforce admin because wherever you had running, they were like, oh, this is our Salesforce admin.

**[34:33]** Somebody maybe from marketing or someone who has never done rev offs, did not know rules and permissions in Salesforce and just gave everybody admin access.

**[34:42]** Okay, well, things are running wild.

**[34:44]** You bring in rev offs for that stability and early stage stability, like stop the chaos or like not even stop, just do what I call like structured chaos.

**[34:57]** You are still in a chaotic environment, but it has a sense and method to the madness to say.

## 35:04 — Series B to D: board meetings and data you can trust

**[35:04]** And once you're going up to use B, D, you start building foundations of like what you already had and now you're evolving into it.

**[35:13]** And now you're evolving into it like a little bit more like things cannot work the same way as you did whenever this is like a more fascinating area that a lot of rev offs people can probably relate is board meetings.

**[35:29]** Like now you have NSUZ totally fine CEOs messaging you like, hey, we have 30 hours to prepare for a board meeting and it's coming in.

**[35:41]** They have so many things on their play there that totally skips their mind.

**[35:45]** Now you're in CSB to D, you just can't have it.

**[35:48]** The expectations are very different that the investors have of you in the board meeting and data needs to be like there.

**[35:54]** The expectations are that you have data foundations.

**[35:59]** The expectations are you're not sharing the numbers and saying, we don't know currently if these are correct numbers.

**[36:07]** I've had early stage companies go in those meetings and say, we don't know if we trust this data right now, but the trust is being built.

**[36:16]** I've seen that evolve.

**[36:18]** Then the conversations in the board meetings change. It's not like, what about this deal? What about that data?

**[36:24]** It's more like, okay, where do we go from here?

**[36:27]** And I've seen that happen and mainly because I've built the foundations that like the conversations would never be.

**[36:34]** We don't trust our data.

**[36:36]** That's what our house is here for.

**[36:38]** Once you build, you're going to see MD range. Majority needs to be built in the system. You start hiring and the way I've hired there is like you don't again need like a crazy big team there to resolve every single problem that's being thrown your way.

**[36:55]** You still have this generalist like Prasanna at the top of like running, running enough.

**[37:01]** But now this person who's leading that organization needs to be more strategic.

**[37:05]** You just cannot be tactical. You cannot be like you have now 10 A's. Everyone's asking and slacking you because of like some Salesforce validation issue like that's that pulls you down.

## 37:17 — The two hires that make a RevOps leader strategic

**[37:17]** All right. And this is where you throw in a head count that allows you to actually get more strategic and the technical pieces are actually more like so I've hired like a Salesforce developer.

**[37:30]** I'm like, okay, all tickets for Salesforce or for CRM or are just going through this developer first as a first triage and if it means escalation, it can come to me.

**[37:40]** I'm going to focus time on like cross collaboration with the leaders because now I have a leader for every single department.

**[37:47]** So company has grown. Those leaders have teams.

**[37:51]** But us keeps on compounding, right? So we have a CS leader. CS leader has 10 people under them. Now RevOps is also serving post sales.

**[38:00]** RevOps is also serving marketing. These teams are growing at a fast pace.

**[38:05]** RevOps, I'm still the same person powering all of it. There's only so much you can do.

**[38:12]** So to avoid that trap of going into like, hey, I'll be just doing tactical things all day. You add a layer between you and then the other layer that I usually as persona wise is an analyst.

**[38:28]** Again, hey, build me this report in the next like hour isn't valuable work at that time for a RevOps leader because the reports and foundation should be there that people should be able to self serve or there's a running trustable dashboard that people can just go extract data.

**[38:48]** Unless it's a very like, hey, as a customer quest, we need to build that out. Great. Time sensitive things you can still, of course, like RevOps is there. You jump in like you build it out and you're like, okay, this is a sensitive thing that needs to go out today.

**[39:01]** You do it. But regular like, hey, I need like to see my pipeline in this. Okay, first thing is like all these dashboards already exist. So if you have done it properly, things already exist.

**[39:14]** You're probably asking the same question, but you have never been enabled, probably. So let's get you to that. But that layer is done by that analyst persona.

**[39:23]** So two personas I have more technical persona. And again, I'm calling is for staff. I've had this person do everything technical of tech stack.

**[39:32]** And then you have an analyst persona. And these two personas allow RevOps to be very strategic sitting in those meetings and making the decisions, but also have like a tactical layer that doesn't like bog you down, but still has like enough.

## 39:48 — Post-IPO: specialization, signed comp plans, and the sandbox debate

**[39:48]** And then you go into your, okay, now you're going into an IPO level company.

**[39:54]** Again, going back to the same model, things can all be the same as they were in series, you know, B2D. Like, there's lots of things that again, like if if I had an IPO company, everybody pinning me every five minutes on a report.

**[40:12]** I would never see another human. So that's when I've seen the structure a lot more formal, a lot more specialized.

**[40:23]** Like, there's a dedicated person, for example, I've hired for composition, like composition cannot be just like this analyst is running it.

**[40:32]** Compositions are much more, the stakes are higher. Teams are larger. They're scaling fast.

**[40:40]** Public company has a lot of other things that I think a lot of times, like, you can't, in a startup, you can get away with. In a public company, you can't. You can't have like, oh, I've had like, in the startup, I've had reps that haven't had a document signed, they're running, but they're still getting paid.

**[40:59]** Okay, well, legal requirements, we do have to have a document signed on a comp plan and have that written somewhere. So agreements and disagreements are actually thoughtfully done rather than just like, hey, we had a handshake agreement on it.

**[41:15]** And that doesn't fly, of course, at an IPO level company, you have to have a lot more structure. So here, the personas actually start becoming more specialized individuals.

**[41:25]** Like you have a compensation person, you have a Salesforce staff, maybe you have another technical resource, then you have your analyst personas within that you're branching, start branching out the teams further and dissect.

**[41:41]** Similar to how like take any other bigger company for any other department, right? You have a product team, like maybe one person was the product team at an early stage company.

**[41:52]** Then you have a product team of like, you know, I don't know, 10 people at a B2D, you keep on increasing.

**[42:01]** And I imagine Google, you can't have 20 people running product. Everyone has a very specialized function, there are people that are working on the drop down in the Chrome tab.

**[42:14]** And that's their specialized function.

**[42:17]** So it starts getting the same narrative starts getting into RevOps. It's like you need more specialization because a stakes are higher.

**[42:27]** You're optimizing micro optimizing the things rather than like you can't overnight again at an IPO company decide to change the whole structure.

**[42:35]** The ship is now a cruise, and now it has to move a lot slowly, but thoughtfully, and technically, you have to go in and kind of like say like, okay, and another interesting example is like early stage companies I used to, and I have this battle with every Salesforce staff I've had.

**[42:55]** They come from slightly bigger companies. So, you know, Salesforce developers specialized function.

**[43:02]** They have a narrative on like, hey, everything needs to go through a sandbox and then deploy it.

**[43:09]** I am off the view.

**[43:11]** Early stage company is useless to build in sandbox, especially if you're building something that's an additive feature.

**[43:20]** If I'm adding a field, and I give somebody two days to do that and say like I'm going to build it, I'm going to test it, I'm going to deploy it.

**[43:28]** By those two days that person was asking for it has moved on to a totally different problem as well.

**[43:34]** For me to build it in prod, another new field that doesn't really disrupt any of my existing process takes me less than five minutes.

**[43:42]** So, my that speed, and like, I get the notion of it.

**[43:49]** The larger your organization keeps on getting those guardrails become a lot more important. Now, at a bigger, larger organization, you cannot just overnight deploy stuff in production.

**[44:01]** Stuff needs to be tested. Again, stakes are a lot higher. You have a very clear deployment schedule. You have sprints.

**[44:09]** I tried to do that in earlier organizations as well, like some early structure, but you need to have a deployment structure. You need to have like change nodes. You need to just explain to people what's coming in, and you need to have an enablement function kind of supporting that.

**[44:24]** Like, do people know this really exists? Like all that stuff starts getting a lot more mature upwards, like in the organization.

**[44:33]** Yeah, the way you put it, the stakes are definitely higher, and one small change can have a ripple effect across thousands or tens of thousands of people.

**[44:41]** And if you use that cruise ship metaphor, just going a few degrees off course when you're going on a very long voyage can dramatically impact where you're going. So yes, all those.

**[44:53]** And you can't scale it back all of a sudden.

**[44:56]** Right. Yeah. That's a point a lot of people don't talk about. Once you make the change, if you make a mistake or release stage, okay, whatever. No big deal. Pull it back. Roll it back. Back to what we were doing.

**[45:09]** If you roll out a mistake, the damage might not even be recoupable. So you may have to live with it.

## 45:17 — Should RevOps hold its own budget?

**[45:17]** I'm curious. So as you're going, it's clear that there's different levels of maturity as you're going through the different stages.

**[45:27]** One thing I see a lot of teams struggle with, and I imagine a lot of people sitting in ahead of RevOps role being like, hey, it is it is time for me to bring on these roles.

**[45:35]** It is time for us to start maturing the org to keep up with the organization. How do you articulate how much you should be investing in RevOps?

**[45:49]** And then if pressed, how are you articulating the value that RevOps is bringing to the organization, especially when you're trying to justify more resource?

**[46:00]** Yeah. I mean, that's it. This is always a hot topic in the RevOps world.

**[46:07]** And I'm off this view again, working through different stages.

**[46:12]** One of the core mistakes I feel companies make is not every company gives RevOps direct budget in hand.

**[46:24]** It's usually the CRO who holds the budget. It's usually the sales VP who holds the budget.

**[46:30]** RevOps usually has to fight to get its own individual budget to kind of run it.

**[46:37]** I'm off the view that is the way to go. I don't think there should be, again, otherwise the decisions are going to be like,

**[46:45]** honestly, I've been in organizations where I've had like three VP of sales change and they made damaging decisions that are not reversible.

**[46:54]** And I was building the foundations through those. So had I been intentional and had the power to directly make those decisions and calls on those like tools, let's say you purchased.

**[47:07]** And RevOps, don't get me wrong, RevOps is a pretty important stakeholder and has a say in this.

**[47:15]** But RevOps needs to be the end decision maker working with the stakeholders.

**[47:23]** Because again, if you are going to make RevOps strategic, you have to give the confidence to RevOps to be strategic.

**[47:30]** You cannot say you have to be strategic, but then you're like, oh, cut off the budget and the budget sits with the marketing team or budget.

## 47:39 — The thankless job — your best day is a boring day

**[47:39]** Which has historically been true because now I'm going to the second part of your question, how do you prove the ROI?

**[47:46]** There are, ROI has always been a tricky subject in any operations role. You may have, it is sometimes, like I joke this with other RevOps people, it's like it's an interestingly thankless job.

**[48:05]** It's like the moment something is working, like it's all good. The moment people stops, everybody knows your name.

**[48:15]** Otherwise, you could totally disappear and be like, everything works great.

**[48:20]** Your best day is a boring day.

**[48:23]** Yeah, exactly.

**[48:26]** But the concept of this is going a lot more.

**[48:31]** RevOps is a contributor to your ARR because productivity still increases your ARR because it's an efficiency form.

**[48:40]** The efficiency is that you can reduce your costs or you can increase your revenue.

**[48:45]** So RevOps works in both areas. RevOps helps you be efficient in your cost structure.

**[48:53]** I have been to organizations where I have cut down immediately after joining like 60K out of their tech stack because it was unused tech stack, nobody made a call on it.

**[49:05]** And you increase the revenue. That's the productivity. I'm working with sales reps where I'm cutting their time down.

**[49:14]** Again, I think we have a conversation on how AI has actually changed this conversation.

## 49:23 — The $120k call-prep agent

**[49:23]** We've deployed agents that I've got about for a rep. We've created a call prep agent, for example, that helps them prep their calls for the day.

**[49:34]** They usually did the same research on every single day's time for, I would say, I interviewed reps and they're like, hey, I roughly spent like an hour in my day just researching before a call because I have multiple calls stacked up.

**[49:50]** So I was like, what if I save you that hour, right?

**[49:55]** That hour into five for your week is five hours per rep.

**[50:00]** Now, if I have, what, 10 reps is what, 50 hours per week?

**[50:05]** That's what, in four weeks is like 200 hours.

**[50:11]** 200 hours per month, if I just took at what, let's say that would amount to almost a 10K per month if I give it like what, let's give it a $50 an hour.

**[50:28]** Again, if you have varying enterprise sellers, but let's say an average around like what, 50, that's what, 10K per month and you have immediately saved 120K for the year.

**[50:40]** Now, the compounding number looks a lot bigger for that one hour because I'm having the conversation in dollars in ROI.

**[50:48]** And this is not even taking into account that this person can use that hour to close a big deal that automatically will increase that.

**[51:00]** Or the effectiveness of the research you're doing compared to the research they're probably doing on their own.

**[51:06]** You're probably giving them more in-depth insights, things that equip them with the things that can increase their conversion rate too.

**[51:13]** 100% because, and it has a, again, it has a structure to it.

**[51:18]** Revops can be, again, in that position to say what works, what doesn't work, take the feedback.

**[51:25]** I've had like reps give me feedback on like, hey, it would be amazing if I had like historical close-loss notes if there's a close-loss opportunity.

**[51:35]** Okay, amazing.

**[51:36]** Like if that surfaces up before your call, you have all the contacts you need.

**[51:40]** We have deployed skills in thought like that.

**[51:43]** You can just run and then all of a sudden get a transcript out of there like how you want to structure your call based on historical disagreements and other things.

**[51:54]** So there's the ROI conversation becomes a lot more important once you stack up a dollar amount to it because Revops historically hasn't been like, you know, a function that you can completely put a dollar amount.

**[52:08]** I think also for target setting, Revops should be tied to ARR revenue targets, right?

**[52:14]** If the company is hitting those, I have skin in the game incentive to make sure like companies hitting the revenue targets.

**[52:20]** And then that becomes almost a moot point is Revops like helping the team.

## 52:25 — The Formula One pit crew — and who designs the car

**[52:25]** If the team is actually, another analogy is like, and I'm not like a formula one fan, but I've seen like enough to know how the system works.

**[52:37]** And you have like this, these people in the pits that are like, you know, doing all of the tire change in like four seconds, six seconds, completely unseen, because when people are like looking at the race or they're usually looking at whoever is driving the car.

**[52:57]** That's your sales team. And then you have your Revops that's actually doing a lot of this like technical work of what truly world class Revops is the one that is also designing the car.

**[53:11]** It's working on the aerodynamics, it's working on like what's the micro things here and there that will make you go faster and make you win in the market.

**[53:21]** If that person is winning the race 10 out of 10 times you give them a path.

**[53:27]** And that's your like metric towards like hey, is Revops actually producing. So if you're also making those decisions using those budgets and if their team is actually hitting the targets and it's actually working, moot point.

**[53:41]** You have the ROI right in front of you.

**[53:45]** You know, I love that metaphor and I think yes, if you're winning, that's great. And then staying with the Formula One metaphor.

**[53:54]** Hey, if you're shaving seconds off of a lap time, if you're shaving seconds off of the time in the pit, changing tires, changing things, like those are direct numbers that are correlated to a win or a loss.

**[54:09]** And I think you can, if you look at the funnel metrics, look at time and stage, are we reducing time and stage?

**[54:19]** Even if you're maintaining time and stage as you're doubling and tripling the team, that's still impressive too.

**[54:25]** So you're putting that much more horsepower on the system, but you're maintaining the same level of efficiency.

**[54:30]** Great point. Yeah, I 100% agree. I think also a lot of overseas, because the top-down targets are like 4x, 6x this, but to your point, yeah, if you're doubling the team and still hitting the same mid-rate, you're doing something right.

**[54:48]** So those micro metrics that go down, like because ARI is derived off those metrics, yeah, your qualification rate, your reps, time to value, they come in, they are onboarding and they're producing a deal in two weeks versus two months.

**[55:05]** That is value. You helped enablement. You helped things. We are trained and you created a system that they can just go in and start selling. So that is all value.

**[55:14]** And these matter too. I mean, if you just increase the conversion rate by a few percentage points, it could be millions of dollars. Even at not super large scale, like if we're talking about a 20 million Series V company, a couple percentage points on your conversion rate could mean millions of dollars.

**[55:34]** And the difference between, and I think that's where conversion comes a lot, but the difference between time and stage and sales cycle overall, a company that grew 80% versus doubled, the valuation isn't even close.

**[55:49]** Like if you can cross that, did we double check box for investors, hold so much more weight. And if your time and stage help you get the ARR in the door fast enough to hit those targets, it can mean tens of millions of dollars to your valuation.

**[56:06]** So like those little micro adjustments. And I've run those numbers in sheets and in calculations with the leaders showing because this comes up in annual planning. You're like, okay, how do you hit that number?

**[56:19]** You're like, the only way you hit that number is you increase your conversion, or you increase your qualification that eventually increases the conversion. So those micro adjustments become super important.

## 56:32 — Stop asking what the ROI of the agent is

**[56:32]** And this actually brings me to another point on like AI agents. I think a lot of people here, like I've seen is like, in my view, are having the wrong conversation on that as well, like on the ROI piece.

**[56:47]** You're like, is this agent producing ROI? Like, okay, you're doing, like, because Rails historically has been a function where it's been a little bit more ambiguous and vague to produce the ROI. I can relate to say like, this is the wrong conversation you're having.

**[57:05]** Does this agent produce X amount of like revenue movement? The agents are not the end goal, right? They're tools. They're tools to increase your metrics and stuff never change.

**[57:19]** So you're still ARR North goal. You still have to increase the conversion. You still have to, the rep onboarding, for example, if I created an agent that actually helped reduce that rep onboarding from a month to weeks, that again is the same conversation we're having right now.

**[57:34]** On value. Like, they're still tied to the same. The only thing it does is like, yes, it's adding cost, but if I didn't add a headcount and built out three different agents that did the exact same thing.

**[57:48]** The conversation, we're going into the wrong direction with that conversation, which would always be time to say like our North stars are still the same.

**[57:58]** And AI is helping us get there. The same way, previously, historical model was like throw a headcount at it.

**[58:08]** And now we have like efficiency equation has changed. Now we're like, okay, you can one person can achieve like the work of three people now.

**[58:19]** And it's funny because I was supposed to actually make our lives a little bit like, hey, it's less work, but it's definitely more work because no, the bar just raises every time.

**[58:29]** Because you are now held accountable for that three, three headcount with the same, like, you know, one person running, but now we have agents.

**[58:40]** It has productivity wise, there's no better time to build. There's no better time to deploy these kind of things.

**[58:51]** And yeah, there's there's just the conversation. Sometimes I think because we're still learning on how these agents like you probably remember like what couple of months.

**[59:05]** Everybody was like cloud maxing and that's a token maxing. Let's go.

**[59:10]** And being in RevOps, just looking at it, it just was like mind boggling to me to see that that's not a strategy.

**[59:22]** That's like, hey, just max out everything in every traction that have the salesperson create a whole CRM by themselves because they don't want to log in in Salesforce.

**[59:33]** That's wild. Like, yeah, we've had people that have burned thousands of dollars in creating something that nobody will ever see or use.

**[59:45]** So now that conversation is changing. All of a sudden. Now people are like, hey, we burned like hundred thousand dollars last month.

**[59:53]** Like, who's using what? And the conversation becomes, okay, let's scale back a little bit because it wasn't thoughtful.

**[1:00:02]** Like, let's just go. And I get that logic as well because it's based against time.

**[1:00:07]** Everybody else is doing you want to max it out. You want to see like where the productivity comes in and scale back.

**[1:00:13]** But could have been done and like the end. Everybody jumped on that wagon, right? Like everyone was like, let's do it.

## 01:00:20 — Is AI making RevOps irrelevant or essential?

**[1:00:20]** Do you do you think AI is making RevOps irrelevant or more important than ever?

**[1:00:28]** That is a good question. I truly believe it has made RevOps a lot more relevant.

**[1:00:36]** And you'll see this because every other big tech company now that is like raising funds and doing all.

**[1:00:45]** Everyone's hiring for RevOps. RevOps was not really a role like 10 years ago we talked about, right?

**[1:00:52]** So what was that two years ago? There was a Gartner report that said like it was the fourth fastest growing job in the US.

**[1:01:05]** And now I see every big company having hiring for RevOps.

**[1:01:11]** Like, because it has proven the point that you do need a centralized function between your go to market.

**[1:01:19]** This is where the go to market is moving. And the only way to adapt it is RevOps.

**[1:01:24]** But now what do you need to build a really kick ass AI infrastructure?

**[1:01:35]** You need the best context that it can get. And the best context sits with RevOps.

**[1:01:44]** And context was not as important at that time because people were doing a ton of different things.

**[1:01:48]** And now all of a sudden people are like, okay, who knows how the system works?

**[1:01:55]** And RevOps has to raise the hand because they're like, yeah, we designed it so we know how it works.

**[1:02:02]** So the context layer is the most important piece in AI deployment.

**[1:02:08]** And that sits with RevOps and that makes RevOps a lot more relevant.

**[1:02:13]** Previously people are like, okay, these people are doing like Salesforce decades or maybe build me a report.

**[1:02:19]** Now I'm deploying company-wide skills for how you run for go to market.

**[1:02:25]** Like all of those stuff, like how you reference stuff, we have Salesforce MCPs.

**[1:02:29]** People are able to do that, but like without context, it's nothing.

## 01:02:33 — Confidently wrong: how AI spreads bad data faster

**[1:02:33]** So and another thing that AI done wrong without RevOps, in my view,

**[1:02:45]** is just makes, while it makes things faster, it also makes the disinformation faster.

**[1:02:55]** So if a sales rep pulls information without any context from Salesforce and says,

**[1:03:04]** show me X amount of like, or let's say, what's our churn rate?

**[1:03:10]** Like that's never been a simple question in Salesforce.

**[1:03:13]** Salesforce has never made it easy unless you add like a ton of other things.

**[1:03:20]** So if somebody goes out of an AMC, it's like, what's our churn rate?

**[1:03:25]** There's no way your MCP can magically just bring that and give you a totally confidently wrong answer.

**[1:03:32]** I was going to say, it'll give you a very confident answer, though.

**[1:03:35]** Yeah, so it does make it.

**[1:03:38]** Yeah, and the interesting part is the confidence doesn't make it right.

**[1:03:41]** The confidence makes it like you just give that bad information with a lot more confidence and faster.

**[1:03:49]** And that has ripple effects.

**[1:03:51]** Now, this person who pulled this report three days ago has a totally different data point.

**[1:03:56]** I am working with the head of CS, who has our actual churn rate running from my skills file,

**[1:04:02]** totally different data point.

**[1:04:04]** Three days later, I'm hearing about, hey, what is our real churn rate because this person has this.

**[1:04:09]** OK, well, now the disinformation went so fast to this person.

**[1:04:13]** This person shared it with other people in the team.

**[1:04:15]** Hey, this is our churn rate.

**[1:04:17]** OK, now it's a total mess, right?

**[1:04:20]** And you don't want to be in a position that you're scaling it back and having those conversations again and again.

**[1:04:26]** Guys, like, use the MCP and use the skills file, right?

**[1:04:31]** So the way you have to do is intentionally deploy it.

**[1:04:34]** So going through RevOps, you have the skills file available to people.

**[1:04:38]** You have an MCP, you have a guide.

**[1:04:41]** We built the notion, like, this is how you use it.

**[1:04:43]** Like, you do take this step, there's a new video you can look at.

**[1:04:47]** Like, there's so many resources for you to know.

**[1:04:51]** And within, like, my skills file, I deploy, ask them what they're looking for.

**[1:04:58]** Should never straight out just give them a number.

**[1:05:02]** Like, ask them what they're trying to find.

**[1:05:05]** And that breaks, like, a lot of the disinformation piece first.

**[1:05:10]** It's like, OK, what are you trying to achieve?

**[1:05:12]** And then it has a whole taxonomy built in.

**[1:05:14]** And, like, how do we actually -- how do we get to a churn rate?

**[1:05:17]** How do we get to our number?

**[1:05:20]** And, yeah, it's interesting.

**[1:05:23]** And then applying that knowledge base, whatever you built, to kind of deploy the agents across is, like, the fun part of it all.

**[1:05:33]** >> Well, I agree with you.

**[1:05:34]** I think it's a -- I think it's a really good time for RevOps.

**[1:05:38]** I think we found ourselves in this role where you're technical enough to do this at scale.

**[1:05:45]** But more importantly of the context, like you mentioned, where there isn't a gap for go-to-market.

**[1:05:51]** There's no, like, revenue rules for exactly how you should measure certain things.

**[1:05:55]** And a lot of it has to be contextualized to the company you're in.

**[1:05:59]** And I think these roles are going to be more important than ever.

**[1:06:03]** And when you realize, hey, a few percentage points on conversion, a few reductions on time and stage,

**[1:06:11]** helping just a little bit on that productivity can mean winning or losing this year, winning or losing the next fundraise.

**[1:06:20]** Like, how could you go into that competition risking not having RevOps on your team?

**[1:06:27]** And you're also probably investing tens of millions, taking that Formula One metaphor.

**[1:06:34]** You have a $20 million go-to-market machine of salespeople, sales managers, marketers, a marketing budget,

**[1:06:41]** all this stuff deployed out in the field.

**[1:06:43]** If you don't have anyone maintaining it or a solid team that really knows what they're doing,

**[1:06:48]** why are you making that big of an investment without taking care of it?

## 01:06:52 — Flip the question: what's the cost of NOT having RevOps?

**[1:06:52]** I fully agree. And I've had CROs ask me, like, during my consulting life.

**[1:06:59]** It's like, do-- they'd be like, why do I need RevOps? And what's the ROI of that?

**[1:07:08]** And I always flipped that question.

**[1:07:11]** I was like, you tell me you're scaling. Why do you not need anyone doing all of the things that you just mentioned?

**[1:07:18]** And what's the cost of not having them?

**[1:07:21]** Like, rather than you asking what's the ROI, let's talk about what's the cost of all of these things running

**[1:07:28]** without anyone strategically deploying or overlooking or managing.

**[1:07:34]** That cost is way more than, like, the ROI you're looking for.

**[1:07:40]** And once it's intentionally designed, it's a multiplier.

**[1:07:47]** Because you don't really have to redo the whole thing if it's intentionally designed in a way that, like, scales.

**[1:07:53]** You're not reworking that. It's at one time, like, hey, you're building it out,

**[1:07:57]** and you're intentionally building, and you're making minor tweaks.

**[1:08:00]** But the cost of not doing it, I just put that, and then they agree.

**[1:08:06]** Like, I'm like, just picture two years from now, you don't have anybody doing this.

**[1:08:11]** You don't have RevOps hired at all.

**[1:08:14]** And where are you sitting now, and what are the conversations you're having with your team?

**[1:08:19]** And that changes the narrative. That's like, oh, yeah, actually, I can see that's going to be a disaster.

**[1:08:25]** Yeah, let's go to the F1 team and say, hey, you have a great car and a great driver.

**[1:08:30]** What do you need an engineering team for?

**[1:08:32]** Yeah, exactly. Going back to the analogy, it's like, why invest in that?

**[1:08:38]** There's a lot of questions there that are like, why not? Because you're going to lose in the market.

**[1:08:45]** 100%.

## 01:08:47 — Wrap

**[1:08:47]** Well, Hassan, I really appreciate everything that you shared.

**[1:08:51]** I think you're a wealth of knowledge, a RevOps connoisseur,

**[1:08:55]** and really, really know what you're talking about through the experience that you've had.

**[1:08:59]** And just to sum up some of the things for anyone who's listening that I think really, really hit home for me,

**[1:09:07]** what does that RevOps organization look like at each of those stages?

**[1:09:12]** As you go from early stage, having that generalist mid-stage,

**[1:09:16]** starting to get specialized teams for maybe a function or a technical role.

**[1:09:22]** And then as you get really scaled out or pass that IPO point,

**[1:09:26]** having those hyper-specialized functions that are maybe owning a very specific part of the org like compensation.

**[1:09:32]** And I think making sure you can articulate the value along the way so that you're not playing catch up,

**[1:09:38]** you can proactively get those things in place, I think is going to be really important.

**[1:09:42]** And like we were talking about, there's no better time to be in RevOps than right now with everything that's happening in AI.

**[1:09:50]** If you're not leading the AI charge in your company, then you're doing something completely wrong

**[1:09:57]** because the ball has been handed to you and your company's expecting you to go run with it.

**[1:10:03]** Yeah, it's a wild time.

**[1:10:06]** Absolutely, absolutely wild time.

**[1:10:08]** Well, thank you for being on the podcast, Asan. Really appreciate it.

**[1:10:11]** I can't wait for the audience to take a listen to this and I can't wait to see what you do next in your career.

**[1:10:17]** Awesome. Thank you.